Free Apricot Jam: And Other Stories by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Page B

into a nightmare of darkness. One could not go on living in such darkness, one could no longer be a man. (The Chekists were watching every movement of his brows and every blink of his eyes.) Once I ’ ve done what they ’ ve asked, most likely they ’ ll just shoot me. (And then they ’ ll leave Polina alone!)
     
    Toward evening the whole cavalry brigade mounted their horses. Many of them were dressed as Cossacks.
     
    They moved off in formation. Ego was there with his retinue of Chekists. Kotovsky ’ s feral gaze could be seen from under his shaggy Kuban papakha .
     
    Was it Kotovsky or Katovsky (from the word kat , executioner)? He ’ d been in prison for murder, and not just one murder. He was a horrifying man, and just looking at him was enough to turn your stomach to jelly.
     
    At twilight the detachments entered the village where they had agreed to meet from opposite directions; the troops dispersed among the huts. (Kotovsky ’ s men, though, left their horses saddled, ready for the slaughter that would begin in another hour or two. Matyukhin ’ s men settled in and made themselves at home.)
     
    They met in a large house of a prosperous family that stood in the middle of the village, near the church and where the lines of houses met. The imposing woman of the house, not yet old, and her daughters and daughters-in-law had set up a row of tables to seat twenty. There was mutton, roast chickens, new cucumbers, and potatoes. Bottles of home-brewed vodka were set along the tables, together with some cut-glass tumblers. There were kerosene lamps on the tables and on the walls.
     
    The Matyukhin men were mostly on one side of the table, Kotovsky ’ s on the other. Ego, presiding over the dinner, had been seated at the end where he could be seen by both sides.
     
    What vital strength emanated from these rebel commanders! So many of them had gone through the German War as NCOs or private soldiers, but now they were serving as commanders.
     
    They were Tambov types, with high cheekbones, rough and hardened faces, and thick lips; a few had bulbous noses, others long and drooping ones. Some had forelocks as fair as flax, others as black as coal; and there was one man who looked like a gypsy, with a face so reddish black that it set off the whiteness of his teeth.
     
    Kotovsky ’ s men, to pass themselves off as Kuban peasants, were to speak in the dialect of that province and some of them in Ukrainian. There was not a single man from the Don region among them, but they counted on the Tambov people not recognizing the Don dialect.
     
    One of the Matyukhin men had a prominent chin and the suspicious face of a backwoodsman. He had bags under his eyes and a drooping moustache; clearly, he was exhausted. But another was a dashing and slender fellow with a twisted moustache and eyes darting about, alert but cheery. He sat at the corner where there was more room, turned sideways with one leg crossed over the other. He seemed not to be expecting any surprises, but was ready for them and for anything else.
     
    Ego could not refrain from nudging him with his foot, twice. But the fellow didn ’ t seem to understand.
     
    Glasses of vodka were poured, raising the mood and the fellowship of the meeting. Mutton and ham were sliced with long knives; smoke from the bracing homegrown tobacco rose here and there and spread across the ceiling. The hostess floated about the room while the younger women fussed, served, and cleared away the dishes.
     
    What if some miracle suddenly took place and saved everything? What if the Matyukhin men realized what was going on and saved themselves ?
     
    The “ Cossack ” second lieutenant, “ Borisov ” (a commissar and Chekist), rose and began reading a fabricated “ Resolution of the All-Russian Conference of Partisan Detachments ” (that now must be convened). Soviets, but without communists! Soviets of the working peasants and Cossacks! Hands off the peasant harvest!
     
    One of